May the 4th be with you, The Circle of Fourths (Part 1)

Yeaaaa… I know, this is very late and nobody cares about the trending topic “May the 4th be with you” stuff right now . But what I’m going to share here, is something about “The Fourth(s)” that we all will carry it forever. for you who just found out, this is the thing you will remember from now on.On my post Take A Walk Around On Scales and Modes Chart, i brought a circle.  And now I brought three circles here. some people who read this would probably think, what circles? why does it have to be a circle?.. well, circles are essentials for our lives. you will amazed by the number of circle’s kind in life.first circle, related to the post title, is The Circle of Fourths. This circle is used to analyze the characteristic of music notes and chords by their intervals. this circle will explain how many flat-notes they have in major scale. why we should know about these? IT IS VERY USEFUL for us to think faster in finding notes, at least that’s the way i use them for now, and by knowing this, there will be more probabilities in finding something to improve our music learning and understanding, also our guitar playing.

as i had learned, the key of C major (based on the Ionian scale) consist no sharps or flat notes. the chords are:

C – Dm – Em – F  – G –  Am – Bm7b5 – C
I___II___III__IV__V__VI____VII____I__ 

and down here is the The Circle of Fourths Chart i made. i customized it so i can define and remember them.

what i can read from this chart is, from the apex, the key of C, then when you follow the blue guy on chart (clockwise), you will get the circle of fourths. the next note(THE FOURTH note, *that’s why it is called Circle of FOURTHS)  after C major is F major. F major as root(1st) has 1 flat note in its chord sequence.

F – Gm – Am – Bb – C – Dm – Em7b5 – F
I___II___III___IV__V__VI____VII___I__

F major key (1 flat-note: Bb)

in the key of F major as root, there is one flat note, the one i colored  with red, the Bb, … i’d like to put more images here to define all these since I’m not good at all in modifying text on blog post.

the next fourth note is Bb and when it comes to 1st or root, the Bb key in major has 2 flat notes:

Bb Major Key (2 flat notes: Bb – Eb

next:

Eb Major Key (3 flat-notes: Eb – Ab – Bb)

Ab Major Key (4 flat-notes: Ab – Bb – Db – Eb)

Db Major Key (5 flat-notes: Db – Eb – Gb – Ab – Bb)

so this far i have defined C, F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db as the major key with the number of flat-notes inside them. the latest one is F#/Gb as the major key, which i save it for the next part of this post with more explanations in it. for God’s sake, for just one circle, this post is way too long…. hahaha